Appreciate you taking the time to review Meltwater’s position. Ours – as you would expect – is very different.

Meltwater have built a substantial business, with £9m turnover and 2,350 clients in UK alone, selling newspaper website content. While we applaud their enterprise, we think a fair share for the content originators is a reasonable proposition. Technically, Meltwater can only create the service by copying newspaper content. They do this in breach of newspapers’ terms of use, and the 1998 act is very clear that they require the owners agreement to make such copies.

NLA is offering Meltwater and its clients a simple, low cost agreement that gives an indemnity against any claim that a newspaper or a supplier to a newspaper might make. That’s good value, and common sense. The licence also makes clear the uses that the information can be put to. That saves users who value compliance the task of reviewing the terms of use of many hundreds of sites. One agreement, one small fee, starting at £58 pa.

More broadly this is about aligning the interests of newspapers, media monitoring companies, and the PR industry. The easy answer is to hope anarchy – no licence – will deliver a solution. We think that will more likely ensure that media monitoring gets squashed as the wider forces shaking the newspaper publishing industry play out. The NLA is offering a solution. Does someone have a credible alternative that addresses the needs of all players?